


l'appel du vide

by AriWrote



Category: NG (Visual Novel)
Genre: Bad End Rosé Spoilers, Character Study, Choking mention, F/M, Friends With Benefits, Headcanon, Implied Sexual Content, Kissing, Minor Death Ideation, Minor Suicidal Thoughts, Post-Good End, Smoking, of a sort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-09
Updated: 2020-01-09
Packaged: 2021-02-27 16:20:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22179970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AriWrote/pseuds/AriWrote
Summary: A lonely night on the balcony of a hotel room*Maybe that is why Rosé always finds herself drawn to the edge of things. Skyscrapers. Bad Decisions. Death. Though this time, she’s chosen the edge of something a little less lofty, though no less dangerous: the balcony of a hotel room where someone, who has become something that Rosé dare not name for fear of what it may do to her, dreams away none the wiser.
Relationships: Ban Naomasa/Mulan Rosé
Comments: 4
Kudos: 10





	l'appel du vide

There is something breathtaking about seeing a city from a height once thought only possible to gods. The moon and stars are so close, she could almost imagine reaching out a hand and plucking Sirius from its place of pride, to steal it as a trophy for her own collection. The people and the chaos melt into nothing up here if you let them; it’s silent in a way Rosé has not been able to find anywhere else.

Maybe that is why Rosé always finds herself drawn to the edge of things. Skyscrapers. Bad Decisions. Death. Though this time, she’s chosen the edge of something a little less lofty, though no less dangerous: the balcony of a hotel room where someone, who has become something that Rosé dare not name for fear of what it may do to her, dreams away none the wiser.

The darkness below Rosé's swinging feet is vast, impenetrable; it is a coy mistress who bats its eyelashes but does not dare reveal its cards so soon. Phantom caresses dance across her bare calves, urging with a crooked finger and a come-hither look between flickering streetlights to just _trust_ , to fall into arms that will surely catch her even if they might not let her go.

The wind bites against her arms, though that pain has faded long, long ago. An impulse drives her forward, and a memory hooks her ankles around the balcony's bars.

When she was younger, she and her sister would sneak out to the top of the widow’s walk that crowned their old family home. The two of them would sit side by side, just like this on the edge of the railing, shoulders pressed as tightly to each other as they could, trading heat back and forth even as the chill brought goosebumps to their arms indiscriminately. They would exchange secrets in these times, or dreams that were impossible but that seemed attainable on a night where Rosé truly believed her sister could grab the crescent moon from the sky and wear it like jewelry.

Rosé missed those days when the name she went by was different and the world seem endless and carefree. Her worries included trying to fit more hours into the day then she had, or arguing with her parents when they didn't agree with her interests. She wasn't concerned with spirits, beyond the ghost stories exchanged on hot summer nights when their parents were asleep and couldn't scold them about the sake on their breaths.

She didn't have to think about porcelain, how fragile it was and yet how easy it was to piece back together. How makeup and a clever hand could only do so much to hide secrets. How easy it would be to just stop holding on, to let go and fall into something she could not wave a magic wand and return from.

Back then, it was easier. It was only her and her sister, alone without a care.

"Hey-" she can almost hear, spoken by a voice which has long since grown weathered by time even as hers retained its girlish youth. "Hey-"

Blue-tipped fingers curl around ice iron, holding her up as she leans closer and closer to the dark city. She tilts her head to the sky and watches the starlight pass above her, pin-prick lights dazzling even still-

“Hey, what are you doing out here?” asks a voice, sleep grounding his syllables down to gravel that sends a jolt up her spine. He can’t even muster up the usual annoyance he so loves to lace his words with when it comes to her, even in moments like these where neither of them can deny its just a facade.

Rosé inhales; the bitter air freezes her throat as it goes down, snaps her awake from a dream she hadn’t realized she’d fallen into. She leans back down, the railing creaking under her weight. Her words, despite her wish, come out raspy, “Did I wake you?”

(She hopes, somehow, that he won’t think much of it.)

Ban doesn't answer, instead comes to join her at the railing. He looks different in the moonlight, a layer of worry and stress melted away. His hair mussed and free from its usual ponytail, several strands are glued to his cheek from sweat, though he doesn't seem intent on brushing them away. Perhaps he deserves decency points for somehow remembering to throw on a pair of ill-fitting pants, though he'd certainly lose them for daring to brave the balcony with a halo of lipstick framed bruises blossoming across his chest. He hisses as naked flesh hits cold metal, and Rosé can't help but smirk.

"You should have worn a shirt," she quips. He's close enough to her that she can feel the warmth radiating off of him, a sharp reminder to her own body that something is missing. An impulse to reach out and hold him pulls at the tip of Rosé's finger, but she can't quite find it in her to rip her hands from the railing that seems to keep her tethered to here.

He side-eyes her--taking in the briefs (not hers) and the carelessly thrown on button-up (also not hers)-- and she can see the words bucking at the back of his teeth. Politely, he doesn't mention either of those things. "Wasn't quite planning on waltzing out into the-" Ban yawns "-refreshing midnight air until-" He yawns again, though this time it feels more like a punctuation to a sentence he did not want to finish.

He's staring up at her from where he's leaning on the railing, his eyes piercing despite the fatigue, bereft of the usual shield of circle-frame sunglasses that now sit (at best) on a nightstand or (at worst) carelessly on the floor to be crushed underfoot when the morning comes to dispel the illusion.

She wonders what he sees; she fears its something even she won’t like.

 _Stop_ , Rosé wants to tell him, _Stop looking at me like that._

Instead, she says, "Why not? It's a nice view."

Ban snorts and turns his eyes down at the city. "Not sure what's so nice about it. Too high up if you ask me." There’s an edge to his voice, though perhaps it’s nothing more than the late hour adding meaning where there is none.

Rosé unhooks her ankles from behind the bar and lets them swing freely. She feels Ban’s heat move almost imperceptibly closer. If she were to look down now, she imagines she might see a hand a hair’s breadth away from her own, ready to loop around her waist and pull her back.

“Coward," she huffs.

“Not all of us are so willing to face death and then tell it to fuck off with your level of grace, Rosé.” Ban digs into his pocket and produces a crumpled packet of cigarettes. A single one remains. Ban gladly pulls it out and places it between his lips, tossing the empty pack behind him into the hotel room. “Care to spot me a light? Should be in the pocket.”

Sure enough, when Rosé checks the left-hand pocket she finds a lighter. It's a sturdy one, hefty in her palm; she traces a thumb over an engraving on the side that even in the dim light she can tell is beautiful. She'd have never expected Ban to respect such craftsmanship.

Rosé tosses it up into the air, just to hear Ban choke and nearly lose his cigarette, and then swings one leg over the railing so she’s facing him when she catches it again. He’s still got that look of surprise on his expression as she turns, and Rosé can practically hear the lecture forming on his tongue.

She leans forward, close enough that she can feel his breath, watch the rise and fall of his chest. His hand, still on the railing tickles against the inside of her thigh. An envious impulse flickers in her heart, urging her to lean closer.

There's no resistance as Rosé plucks the cigarette from Ban's mouth. There's a slight tremble in his expression as her thumb grazes his lip; she relishes the stolen heat. Whatever words he had prepared fall empty, dead from his lips and off into the dark city below. Silence sits between them and waits for one of them to make a move.

It breaks with sword-sharp _shiiiing_ of the lighter being flicked open and the flint being struck.

Rosé places the cigarette between her lips and lights the end. The smoke fills her lungs with warmth as she takes in a drag. She can pretend for a brief moment that she's fought off the chill, even if it all comes flooding back as soon as she pulls the cigarette from her lips and blows the smoke out into the air. The lighter closes shut with a resolute click.

Ban blinks back to life. His voice, however, is telling enough of where his mind still remains. “Didn’t know you smoke.”

“I can appreciate a rare treat here and there,” Rosé replies, she offers the cigarette to Ban who takes it as though it were a knife pointed in his direction. Only once it’s gone does Rosé allow herself to discreetly cough. “Though I’m not sure I’d call those a ‘treat’. How cheap were they?”

“None of your business,” Ban says, the call of their usual dance enough to pull him back. He sets it between his lips and takes in a drag. The smoke blows out with his words, “Sorry I can’t lavish you with expensive cigars and wine. I’m not exactly that kind of man.”

"It's not my fault I developed a particular palate." When Ban extends the cigarette towards her, she takes it. The warmth fills her once more, and she can almost overlook the bitter taste on her tongue. When it comes time to offer it back, she leans closer and places it between his lips. Obediently, Ban opens his mouth to accept it. The _th-thump th-thump th-thump_ of his heartbeat is almost audible as she whispers into his ear, "But I must say, it's growing on me."

She feels Ban’s hand tighten on the railing, but ignores it, choosing instead to pull away and lean back. She turns her eyes back towards the city: the cars dotting the streetways as blurs of color and light, the people meeting and parting so inconsequential when this high up, the street lamps offering isles of respite from the darkness and the dangers Rosé knows are lurking in wait.

“Why did you come out here?”

His tone brooks no argument, allows for no bullshit. His words say one thing, but she knows he is asking something else. If Rosé turned and faced him here (if some deeply ingrained cowardice disguised as stubbornness did not keep her eyes trained out to the world), she imagines the expression he might wear: a furrowed brow, his lips pursed into a thin line, the muscles in his jaw firm, _that damn look_ back in his eyes trying to find the cracks and pulling where he never should. It is that expression that makes her wonder what Ban was like back in the old days, when time hadn’t done its worst to him and turned him to chasing the high of a winning bet more than he did the honest truth.

Some part of her wants to answer him, to spill the secrets she’s been holding back for far longer than her appearance would lead one to believe.

To reach for him, to pull him close and let him feel beneath the glamour and the facade, to understand the way her skin greedily steals heat because it’s lost its right to its own.

To let her vision fill with black and her skin to fracture like a spider web. For him to realize the beauty she cultivates is as fake as he jokes it is.

To place his hands against her throat, to feel the seconds, the minutes between each weak _thump_. To tell him to squeeze until the air can’t reach already dead lungs, to let him see just once how no matter how hard she tries, she just can’t die.

She feels the words on the edge of her tongue, teetering ever so.

It would be so easy,

so simple just to say,

to let them fall in a rush

secrets that have been building in her chest for decades,

but she pulls back like she always does.

“I’m a woman of many mysteries,” she says instead, turns to face Ban who looks almost... disappointed (though how could he be, when he knew this is how it always would end?). Her fingers curl against his chin, lifts it up to her own. He dutifully lets her, ignoring the cigarette as it tumbles from his lips and down, down, down with his questions and Rosé’s honest answers.

He tastes of smoke and nicotine, of the wine they’d shared as an excuse before fumbling back to her hotel room, of the lingering traces of her lipstick smudged across his lips. They’re chapped, rough enough she can imagine biting down and pulling blood from his lips. It’s almost tempting, but it’s not what she wants right now. She lets herself finally be greedy instead, to push forward and bask in the warmth of him, to let it fight off the corpse cold reminder in her fingertips, her chest. If she closes her eyes, she can almost imagine his rapid heartbeat thrumming against her palm is her own.

For all the edges she stood on, for all the edges she’s dared to let herself fall from,

“This one, I’m afraid I can’t let go of.”

**Author's Note:**

> Points to whoever can guess who Rosé's sister is ;)
> 
> Yeah, this is veeeeeeeeery heavy on the headcanon because I apparently love Rosé more than EXP does and think about her a lot. Apologies if you're a diehard canon fan.


End file.
